


Allegiance

by misspamela



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Gen, Good Sibling Alec Lightwood, Older Sibling Alec Lightwood, alec and izzy sibling feels, alec is just such a good big brother, please see notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 01:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misspamela/pseuds/misspamela
Summary: In one of Izzy’s earliest memories, she was watching a mundane family eating pizza. She remembered remembers pressing her small face against the glass of the storefront window, her breath fogging around her, giving the scene inside the restaurant an even more dreamlike feel. A father, tickling the feet of a small girl, who was squealing and slapping her hands on the table as she giggled. A mother, carefully wiping sauce from her son’s mouth, lecturing him about the mess with a smile on her face.Izzy remembered tugging on Alec’s hand, saying, “Look, they’re just like us, but happy.”“They’re mundanes,” Alec had said, barely glancing at them as he leaned against the fogged-up glass. “They’re nothing like us.”PLEASE SEE NOTES FOR CONTENT WARNINGS





	Allegiance

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Depiction of brief unwanted sexual contact/groping. 
> 
>  
> 
> Big thanks to Elisabeth for her speedy beta!

After the Institute Battle, when Izzy’s stamina rune and iratze wore off, she felt it all at once: a wave of exhaustion, lifting up and crushing her like a tidal wave; the bone-deep pain of yin fen withdrawal like fire in her bones. She stumbled, her hands trying to find purchase on the smooth stone walls of the Institute, when another wave of burning fire washed over her and she fell, senseless to the floor. 

Izzy didn’t wake up all at once. She could feel the cool sheets under her...or was it that she was hot? She felt hot and dry all over. There was a blanket weighing her down and it seemed like too much effort to move or talk. Was she injured? Attacked? Captured? 

A door opened and she tensed, the movement sending a shock of pain through her body. She whimpered, and the person came closer. Light and shadow behind her eyes and then--

“Hey.” That soft, familiar, rumbling voice swept over her, relaxing her immediately. Alec’s voice had seen her through every injury, every illness, for as long as she could remember. She cracked her eyes open. Infirmary. The Institute. The Battle. “Sleeping on the job,” Alec said softly, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

“Hello my sweet,” Magnus was there too, bending down into her line of sight. “You overexerted yourself. Too many healing runes, too many stamina runes, all wrapped up with a nice little yin fen withdrawal bow.” He smiled, eyes his crinkling at the corners. “More magic won’t help. You need lots of sleep and a lot of fluids.” He touched her forehead, gentle and sure, and her eyes fluttered shut again. 

Before she drifted off again, she could feel Alec take her hand, warm and firm. He was everything in the world made safe again. Izzy slipped away, letting the fever take her, half-dreaming, half-remembering...

 

 

In one of Izzy’s earliest memories, she was watching a mundane family eating pizza. She remembered remembers pressing her small face against the glass of the storefront window, her breath fogging around her, giving the scene inside the restaurant an even more dreamlike feel. A father, tickling the feet of a small girl, who was squealing and slapping her hands on the table as she giggled. A mother, carefully wiping sauce from her son’s mouth, lecturing him about the mess with a smile on her face. 

Izzy remembered tugging on Alec’s hand, saying, “Look, they’re just like us, but happy.” 

“They’re mundanes,” Alec had said, barely glancing at them as he leaned against the fogged-up glass. “They’re nothing like us.” 

Izzy remembered remembers feeling sad, a big kind of sad, like there was something happening she didn’t quite understand, until Alec squeezed her hand and said, “Hey, Joseph Winterbloom got an old stele from his brother. Wanna see?”

 

………………………………………….

When Izzy was eight, she chose her weapon. 

“A whip?” her mother had said. “Flashy.” She shook her head. “You’re better off applying yourself to the sword, Isabelle. Whips require precision and discipline to be effective.” She turned, giving Izzy a final, dismissive glance, and waved her off. 

 

Izzy remembered remembers feeling hot all over. A sick, shaking anger rose up in her throat. She stood there, her fists clenched by her side, wishing she had her whip, her sword, anything. She’d show her mother. 

Later that night, she found her way to Alec’s room. He was studying his runes at his desk and looked up, smiling when he saw her. He was smiling less these days. “Hey, Iz,” he said. “Heard you picked the whip. Nice.” 

She opened her mouth to answer, and burst into tears. 

The panicked look on Alec’s face would have been funny if she wasn’t so upset. He pulled her into his room, looking down the hall to see if anyone else had heard her. Shadowhunter children didn’t cry, especially ones as old as Izzy. 

“Mother,” she got out, and buried her face in his chest. They had been the same height until a few months ago. Now he felt so much bigger than her. 

She drew in a shaky breath. “She says...the whip requires discipline. Precision.”

“Well,” Alec said into her hair. “Then I guess you’re going to have to show her what discipline looks like.” 

Isabelle’s sob turned into a choked-out laugh. “I guess.” 

“Seriously.” He pushed her away and looked in her eyes. “Be the best. She can’t take it away from you if you’re the best.” 

“I’ll be the best,” she promised. “Like you.” Alec was the best Shadowhunter she knew. 

He looked away, biting his lip.. “You can stay in here while I study,” he said, pushing her toward the bed. “As long as you’re quiet.”

 

…………………………………………..

Just after Izzy turned 11, she and Alec were sent out to “patrol.” It was a tradition for newly-runed Shadowhunter children. They were taken somewhere relatively safe, with low demonic activity, and left on their own to practice their observation and tracking skills. It was mostly an exercise in hiding from mundanes and activating runes in the field.

They were in a park, surrounded by chattering mundanes, oblivious and dull. Izzy wondered sometimes, what they talked about. Boring, boring, boring. 

Alec was standing next to her, watchful but relaxed. She caught him smiling down at her a few times, looking at the fresh rune on her arm, before he flattened his features into bored disinterest. 

The hours wore on and Izzy was trying to pay attention, she really was, but there was a dog playing in a fountain and her concentration slipped for just a few minutes--

She felt Alec go stone-still beside her. Izzy immediately began scanning the area, her hand to her stele, looking for demons, downworlders, anything out of the ordinary. Her heart was still pounding in her chest when she realized Alec hadn’t moved, wasn’t looking at her to attack. He was just standing there, his hands clenched at his sides. He wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t looking at anything. She followed his gaze to nothing, a blank spot of lawn between some mundane couples on the grass. 

“Alec?” she whispered, looking at him.  
“No talking,” he snapped. “We’re on patrol.” She could feel his distress. She could almost see it coming off him, waves of misery like when he had a bad day training or a tough meeting with their mom. 

Okay, so, no demons. She was Isabelle Lightwood, Shadowhunter. She could use her observation skills. 

There was the dog, playing in the fountain. It look like a normal, non-demonic dog. An older man, walking with a cane and smiling at a little girl. A man yelling angrily into his phone -- was he a demon? No, just a mundane businessman -- a blanket laid out near the fountain with two teenage boys, maybe 16 or 17 years old. They were talking, laughing, teasing each other, and...oh. Kissing. Boys, kissing each other. That was something mundanes and downworlders did, Izzy knew that. 

She also knew that those boys were why Alec was holding himself like he had a broken rib, stiff and staring. She knew it wasn’t because he was disgusted by mundane foolishness. Somehow...she just knew. 

 

Isabelle Lightwood was raised to have her brother’s back, to protect his flank. She’ds been trained to spot weaknesses, exploit them. Deal a killing blow. This was Alec’s vulnerable spot. Someone could deal him a killing blow, if they knew. The Clave...Izzy shivered. 

“Let’s go,” she said, pulling on his arm. “There’s nothing around here and mundanes are so boring.” 

Alec startled and looked down at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, let’s go.”

 

\------------------------------------------------

Izzy was 14 the first time someone tried to grab her ass during training. Tommy Fairdawn had her in a hold, then flipped her around and kept brushing his gross hand all over her butt. Izzy managed to wiggle her way out, but she felt off-kilter the rest of the day.

If Alec had been there, he might have done something, but he was at weapons training. And anyway, Izzy didn’t need her brother to fight her battles for her. She should have reacted in the moment, tried to take him down. He was taller and stronger, but that shouldn’t matter to a Lightwood. 

She had just been so surprised, was all. It left her feeling weird and a little sick and vulnerable, something she wasn’t used to feeling outside of audiences with her mother. 

When she was braiding her hair before bed, there was a knock on her door. “Yes?” she called.

Alec pushed the door open and leaned on the doorframe, his arms crossed. Izzy felt tears prick at her eyes for the first time that day. Alec was here, looming and a little grumpy, and he was so dear and familiar and safe that Izzy wanted to cry at the sight of him. 

“I heard what happened in training,” Alec said. She could see a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Apparently that piece of shit was bragging about it.” 

“To you?” Izzy asked incredulously. She didn’t think that Tommy was quite that stupid. “Is he still breathing?”

“If he’d bragged to me, he wouldn’t be.” Pushing off with his hip, Alec came into the room. He tugged on the bottom of her braid. “You ok?” 

Izzy drew in a shaky breath and nodded, pushing her emotions as far down as possible. She was iron. She was a Shadowhunter. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I just have to move faster next time.”

“Iz,” Alec says, his tone quiet and serious behind her. She lookeds up to meet his eyes, reflected in her vanity mirror. “It wasn’t your fault.” She looked away, unable to deal with the worry on his face. He’d been worrying so much lately, this burning anxiety inside him as the parabatai ceremony drew closer. 

“But of course, if it’ll make you feel better…” Alec trailed off and she looked up at him again. He shrugged, all fake casualness. “I could show you how to kick his ass into next week.” 

“You think I can?” she asked, feeling her heart lift. 

“I think you’re going to send him crying back to Idris with a few broken fingers,” Alec said, holding out his hand. She took it and jumped up, tackling him with a hug. 

And the following week, Tommy went back to Idris, nursing three broken fingers, a broken rib, and a mild concussion. 

…………………………………………..

Izzy struggled back to consciousness momentarily, opening her eyes to see Alec leaning back, away from the bed. He was looking at Magnus and smiling at him, unselfconscious and loose, his legs splayed out in front of him. As she fell back asleep, she remembered. 

 

It was the smile that did it. 

 

When she saw Alec the morning after they healed Luke, he was cagey, eyes darting around the room, admitting that Magnus made cocktails. If it was anyone else, she’d think that it was a euphemism, but she fully believed believes that Alec was that freaked out just by being alone with a hot guy. She expected Alec to be flustered, then repress, repress, repress like he always did. 

She wasn’t expecting the smile. 

Alec turned to leave and, just as his back was almost to her, a smile broke out on his face. It was goofy and a little helpless, and utterly radiant with joy. She couldn’t remember the last time Alec smiled like that. Izzy’s breath caught, tears stinging her eyes, and she saw a vision, in that smile, of the man Alec could have been. 

Izzy quickly wiped her eyes. If Magnus Bane could put that smile on her brother’s face, she didn’t give a crap if he was a Downworlder, a man, immortal. None of that mattered. From that moment on, she was Magnus’ biggest fan. She would do anything to see that smile on her brother’s face again. 

It was the smile that she thought of, weeks later, as she watched the wedding invitation burn to ash in front of her, hoping against hope that Magnus wouldn’t ignore her message. 

It was her turn to save her brother.


End file.
